Posts Tagged ‘1995

Fantastic Alice: New Stories from Wonderland edited and introduced by Margaret Weis, an American fantasy author and joint creator of the Dragonlance game world.

ISBN-10: 0441002536

Published by Ace Fantasy (Ace Books); first edition paperback (1995).

A collection of seventeen (rather uneven) short stories inspired by Alice: the titles are rather more interesting than the stories themselves, including:

Muchness (Jody Lyn Nye)

The Rabbit Within (Gary A. Braunbeck)

Who Killed Humpty Dumpty (Mickey Zucker Reichhert)

I’m not the only one who is unconvinced:

From Publishers Weekly:

The current spate of themed, written-to-order anthologies leaves us awash in mediocrity; Fantastic Alice, in which 17 authors rework material by Lewis Carroll, is only a partial exception. Only Bruce Holland Rogers in the touching “A Common Night”-the best story here, despite an unconvincing close-illuminates what he borrows. He makes intriguing connections between Carroll and Emily Dickinson, and his verse is impressively clever. Several stories bring Carrollian characters to the real world; the best is Peter Crowther’s eerie, disturbing “Conundrums to Guess,” in which the Red Queen shows up (with an ax), but it’s undeveloped and rushed. Lawrence Watt-Evans, Jane M. Lindskold and Esther M. Friesner bring to reality the Cheshire Cat, the Dormouse and the Duchess’s pig-baby, respectively, with some cleverness and imagination. Most of the stories that put characters into versions of Carroll’s worlds, though, fail to one degree or another. The late Roger Zelazny contributes turgid and violent mythopoeia, Janet Pack a whimsy-slaying and sloppy “It was all a dream-or was it?” cliche; Mickey Zucker Reichert’s and Connie Hirsch’s takeoffs are flat-footed and laborious. While the writing here is generally professional and there is some cleverness throughout, too often we feel we’re seeing an old-time star spliced into a low-budget remake.

Published by Kitchen Sink Press in 1995 (Book one) and 1996 (Book two).

Book One: ISBN-13: 978-0878164066

Book Two: ISBN-13: 978-0878164370

Erotic graphic novels featuring a grown up Alice, Wendy and Dorothy. Not one for the kiddies!!

From the publishers:

For more than a century, Alice, Wendy, and Dorothy have been our guides through the Wonderland, Neverland, and Land of Oz of our childhoods. Now, like us, these three lost girls have grown up and are ready to guide us again, this time through the realms of our sexual awakening and fulfillment. Through their familiar fairytales they share with us their most intimate revelations of desire in its many forms… revelations that shine out radiantly through the dark clouds of war gathering around a luxury Austrian hotel. Drawing on the rich heritage of erotica, Lost Girls is the rediscovery of the power of ecstatic writing and art in a sublime union that only the medium of comics can achieve. Exquisite, thoughtful, and human, Lost Girls is a work of breathtaking scope that challenges the very notion of art fettered by convention. This is erotic fiction at its finest.

According to Wikipedia:

The first six chapters of Lost Girls were initially published in the Taboo anthology magazine, beginning in 1991 with Taboo #5. Kitchen Sink Press’s Tundra imprint later reprinted the Taboo chapters as two separate volumes, containing all of the previously-published chapters.[18] A ten-issue series was scheduled at one point, but Moore and Gebbie instead decided to take the time to finish it, then offer it to various companies as a finished product. Eventually Top Shelf was selected as the publisher, and at one point the finished product was meant to be released in late 2003 or early 2004. In the U.K. the book was published on 1 January 2008, and launched by Moore and Gebbie at a book launch in London on 2 January.

This series of pamphlets are called “Doctor’s Books” as they were sent to GPs’ surgeries to get them to encourage the drinking of Guinness for medical purposes: apparently very good for nursing mothers for example… how times change.

Guinness began printing these in 1933, carried on until World War 2 halted the practice, and started again in 1950. The booklets were then produced each year until 1966. They were produced by the advertising agency SH Benson, who made many of the iconic Guinness ads. There were 24 booklets produced, of which five were Alice spoofs. This is the third of those.

Parodies include Alice Through the Guinness Glass, The Three Little Sisters, Humpty Dumpty Re-Cited, Clubberwocky and The French have a Word For It :

“What’s the French for Guinness?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know that” said Alice.

“Why, ‘Guinness’ of course!” said the Queen.

“But that’s the same word,” objected Alice.

“Why shouldn’t it be” said the Queen. “Even if you must talk French, there’s nothing like a Guinness, except another Guinness.”

The landscape of Quantum Physics is explored by sending Alice to Quantumland, where each character she encounters explains a different aspect of quantum theory. Includes sections on the Uncertainty Principle, wave functions and the Pauli Principle. Even I understood some of it. Briefly.

From the publisher’s notes:

Alice falls through the screen of her television set and finds herself in Quantumland. This is a place where she encounters unusual characters who demonstrate to her the basics of quantum physics.

She meets electrons, whose positions must be uncertain unless they are moving rapidly

She visits the Heisenberg Bank and sees particles get short term energy loans

She talks to the Uncertain Accountant who cannot make his books balance because of energy fluctuations.

She meets the Quantum and Classical Mechanics at the Mechanic’s Institute and sees demonstrations of interference in their Gedanken room.

At the Fermi Bose Academy she is told how the Pauli Principle deals with hundreds of identical electron students.

From the Mendeleev Pier she explores the energy levels within an atom.

She visits Castle Rutherford, the home of the nuclear Family.

The three Quark Brothers explain the composition of strongly interacting particles at the Particle MASSquerade.